"Mr Blair should now follow the public he has so long misled and end
this dangerous experiment with a hazardous and unwanted technology
before it is too late."
---
DAILY MAIL (London) February 6, 2002
FRANKENFOODS The truth at last
Geoffrey Lean

FORGET all those bland reassurances about the safety of GM foods and
crops. Ignore all those patronising experts and Government ministers who
have long insisted that the public has been irrational to suspect them.
Two reports from the heart of the scientific establishment now reveal that
the British people were right to have been worried. Housewives and their
families turned against the so-called Frankenstein foods years ago, refusing
to buy them. The supermarkets followed suit quickly, taking them off their
shelves. This is likely to be recorded as the week in which those who are
supposed to govern and guide us finally begin to abandon GM foods too.

Already ministers are edging away from the technology, which the Prime
Minister once adopted almost as a personal crusade, and are increasingly
talking up organic agriculture. Last week the official Curry Commision,
set up at the height of the foot- and-mouth epidemic to review British
farming, strongly backed chemical-free agriculture. It also called for
the public's fears on GM crops to be 'respected'. Ministers welcomed the
report and called for an independent debate on GM technology before any
decision was taken to grow the crops commercially. This week's reports
- one from the Government's official wildlife watchdog, the other from
Britain's principal scientific body - are bound to accelerate the retreat.
They confirm that the two main concerns about the technology - first raised
by the Daily Mail more than three years ago - are real. Genes have, as
feared, escaped in pollen from GM crops, creating 'super weeds' which are
resistant to herbicides; and GM foods - which Mr Blair said he was happy
to feed his children - may indeed damage human health. Lord Melchett, who
was arrested for uprooting GM crops, calls the reports a 'breakthrough'
and Peter Ainsworth, the shadow environment secretary, says they show the
Government must 'put caution first'. The first report, by English Nature,
bluntly concludes that it is 'inevitable' that super weeds will emerge
in Britain if GM oilseed rape is grown here. A Canadian Government study
found them at every site examined and discovered that the GM genes 'travelled'
more than 730 metres from the crops. This makes a nonsense of Britain's
safety precautions, which allow for a gap of only 50 metres between GM
rape and other crops. But, alarmingly, the report adds that the genes spread
so readily that even multiplying this distance many times over will do
little to reduce the danger. It concludes that the contamination 'is almost
impossible to prevent unless the crops are very widely dispersed'. It can
say that again. Studies carried out by the National Pollen Research Unit
for the Soil Association suggest that genes from oilseed rape could travel
four miles, not just creating super weeds but endangering organic agriculture.

Organic farmers say they cannot coexist with GM technology, and that
the public would be denied the chance to buy uncontaminated food if such
crops were grown widely in Britain. And that is not the only danger. Once
the super weeds get established, the report says, only highly toxic chemicals
will get rid of them. The Canadians still use 2,4D, an ingredient of the
infamous herbicide Agent Orange that was used in Vietnam and is banned
in Britain.

The second report is, if anything, even more remarkable. It comes from
the Royal Society which has been one of the most ardent proponents of GM
technology in Britain. In 1998 it produced a report extolling its potential
benefits for 'agriculture, food quality, nutrition and health'. But now
it has evidently had second thoughts. A working group of the society, including
some leading GM supporters, now reluctantly concludes that the foods may
damage health after all. It continues to insist that 'there is no reason
to doubt the safety of foods made from GM ingredients that are currently
available' but adds that the technology could 'lead to unpredicted harmful
changes' in ingredients put into infant foods or given to pregnant or breastfeeding
women in future. And it adds that introducing a new gene into a plant could
'induce allergic reactions' in sensitive people. Even more disturbingly,
the Royal Society questions the system used in Britain to determine whether
GM foods are safe. This has long been attacked by critics as being specifically
designed to avoid testing them. If GM foods are similar to non-GM ones
in a limited way - such as the amounts of fibre and fatty acids, proteins,
carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals they contain - it is simply assumed
that the chemical and genetic differences will not make them more toxic.
The authorities declare them to be 'substantially equivalent' to non-GM
foods and wave them through. But the Royal Society, which is calling for
the system to be tightened, now admits that this may not reveal 'any unexpected
effects of genetic modification'. This change of heart is long overdue.
Both the scientific establishment and the Government have been complacent
about the risks of GM technology. It is scandalous that such a slapdash
method of checking for health dangers has been allowed to persist for so
long. But the Government's attitude to testing for the spread of genes
to create 'super weeds' and contaminate other crops has been almost as
negligent. Ministers have sugested time and again that 'farm-scale trials'
- where scores of fields have been split between GM and non-GM crops -
would provide conclusive evidence on their safety. But the trials were
not designed to look at whether genes escape, but at the effect different
ways of using pesticides on the two crops had on wildlife. No wonder Environment
Minister Michael Meacher admitted last week that the Government does not
have high credibility' on GM issues and 'needs to listen' to the public.
As the reports reveal, it should have done so a long time ago. Mr Blair
should now follow the public he has so long misled and end this dangerous
experiment with a hazardous and unwanted technology before it is too late.